Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-31T23:37:43.106Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Are There Cases of Simultaneous Causation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

A. David Kline*
Affiliation:
Iowa State University

Extract

The problem of the direction of causation has received considerable press. Justifiably so, since it is a major bottleneck in accounts of causation and explanation. But there is another, not unrelated, yet unexamined, temporal issue for those same accounts. Numerous writers have uncritically assumed that there are instances of simultaneous causation. (A necessary condition for e and e', two causally related events, to be in a simultaneous causal relation is that there be no time-difference between e and e' or that e and e' occur at the same time.)

The assumption is not impotent. Alleged instances of simultaneous causation have been used to argue against various views of causation/explanation. For example, Richard Taylor (1966), Douglas Gasking (1955) and Baruch Brody (1972) have used such cases to critique regularity or nomic-subsumption accounts. Myles Brand (1979) in a very recent paper uses simultaneous causation to challenge Wesley Salmon's statistical relevance analysis (1970).

Type
Part X. Time, Causation and Matter
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brand, Myles. (1979). “Causality.” In Current Research in Philosophy of Science. Edited by Asquith, Peter D. and Kyburg, Henry E.. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association. Pages 251281.Google Scholar
Brody, B. A. (1972). “Toward an Aristotelian Theory of Explanation.Philosophy of Science 39: 2031. (As Reprinted in Klemke, Hollinger and Kline (1980), pp. 112-123.).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gasking, Douglas. (1955). “Causation and Recipes.Mind 64: 479487.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hedman, Carl G. (1972). “On When There Must Be a Time - Difference Between Cause and Effect.Philosophy of Science 39: 507511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holton, Gerald and Roller, Duane. (1958). Foundations of Modern Physical Science. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klemke, E. D., Hollinger, Robert and Kline, A. David. (eds.). (1980). Introductory Readings in the Philosophy of Science. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
Kline, A. David. (1977), The Direction of Causation. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin. Xerox University Microfilms Publication Number 77-6615.Google Scholar
Kline, A. David. (1980). “Screening Off and the Temporal Asymmetry of Explanation.Analysis: forthcoming.Google Scholar
Salmon, Wesley C. (1970). “Statistical Explanation.” In Nature and Function of Scientific Theories. (University of Pittsburgh Series in Philosophy of Science, Volume 4.) Edited by Colodny, Robert G.. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Pages 173231. (As Reprinted in Salmon, Wesley et al. (1971). Statistical Explanation and Statistical Relevance. Pittsburgh: Press. Pages 2987.).Google Scholar
Salmon, Wesley C. (1975). Space, Time and Motion. Encino, California: Dickenson.Google Scholar
Taylor, Richard. (1966). Action and Purpose. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Weidner, Richard T. and Sells, Robert L. (1973). Elementary Classical Physics 2nd ed. Boston: Allen and Bacon.Google Scholar